4 ms·

This bears an uncanny resemblance to the great depression, the dust bowl era, and "The Grapes of Wrath." Back then, companies distributed fliers advertising fr

This bears an uncanny resemblance to the great depression, the dust bowl era, and "The Grapes of Wrath." Back then, companies distributed fliers advertising fruit picking temp. jobs. Americans would travel hundreds of miles just to fight with 3000 other unneeded people for such jobs. Today we have companies making websites telling people to "learn to code" and advertising that there is a shortage of tech workers. People invest their own time, and pay for bootcamps for a shot at a job. And the similarities don't end there. Agriculture owners would offer services like groceries and laundry to those who worked on their plantations...

deleted 11y ago
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jjoonathan 11y ago
It doesn't just happen during market downturns. The flip side of "market forces eventually make bread and apartments and cars cheap" is (and has always been) "market forces eventually make labor cheap". Quality of Life has one factor in the numerator and one in the denominator, so there are only three ways to guarantee that the quotient rises: ignore the less-rosy factor, convince yourself that past performance is proof of future returns (rather than, say, superimposition over a long-term trend of benefits from technological progress), or to fight+luck your way to the winning side of the supply/demand game and ignore those who don't. The time will come when software engineering starts to saturate. Just like electrical engineering, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering... our time will come.
sceptic05 11y ago
In some ways it's actually worse in that programmers seem completely oblivious to what's happening to them. They allow the media to call them "coders" and will actually argue with you when you point out how the term is being used to marginalize them. They actively support the boot camp movement and code.org initiatives. They give talks at conferences[1] and write blog posts saying there's no such thing as programmer talent and that programming is easy and anyone can do it (could you imagine a doctor or lawyer publicly asserting likewise about their professions?) My advice to devs: make as much money as you possibly can now. Take VCs and tech companies for all they're worth and don't leave a penny on the table, because these people are fixing to crush you under their boot. 1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9486391 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9486391
- xienze 11y ago
  > They give talks at conferences[1] and write blog posts saying there's no such thing as programmer talent and that programming is easy and anyone can do it (could you imagine a doctor or lawyer publicly asserting likewise about their professions?) I think it's more akin to someone saying "anyone can paint" or "anyone can make music". Sure, on a very superficial level that's true. Anyone can make crude sketches or learn how to play Chopsticks. But a true aptitude for programming is the same as a true aptitude for art or music: not everyone can do it at that level.
  - jonesb6 11y ago
    Except software engineering is both a science and an art. The statement 'anyone can make art' is widely accepted, but what about 'anyone can do science'? While anyone can pretty much do science the "I'm bad at math" or 'I suck at computers" rhetoric demonstrates a deep institutional feeling that science is fundamentally limited to only the most intelligent individuals. Thus by limiting SE to only being an art it devalues the skillset, proving OP's point IMO.
- deleted 11y ago
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- iofj 11y ago
  It's not just programmers, it's the left in general. The left, in the US, is pro-immigration. The left is supposed to be champion of the poor, and one thing is damn sure : restricting employer's access to cheap labor (meaning restricting immigration + high import taxes + restrictions on global workforces) certainly help that a lot. Although I'm starting to see the same in Europe. The "old" leftist parties are vehemently anti-immigration, for exactly this reason : it helps their constituency. The "young" left is really almost libertarian, which I would normally classify under extreme right. But I think the problem America's two-party political system: sometimes it feels like it's extreme-right versus lunatic-right.
mkozlows 11y ago
It may well be accurate to say that employers are reluctant to raise wages for developers, and that in the absence of that reluctance, salaries would be much higher. But to claim that devs are basically the same as exploited migrant agricultural labor is absurd to the point of offensiveness.
- iofj 11y ago
  > that devs are basically the same as exploited migrant agricultural labor is absurd to the point of offensiveness. I think the claim is more along the lines of "give it 5-10-20 years and ..." It's not as ridiculous as you make it out to be though. I'd like to point out that if you go anywhere in Eastern Europe (and if you want to be truly scared: rural Eastern Europe) or (I'm told) India, and you will see just that today. Sure there's places to migrate to that will (currently) pay much better (it's scary, a decent Polish programmer can see his gross pay go up 300% and net pay almost 400% by moving to California). I would like to say that partly this is because it's a bit of a lemon market in Eastern Europe. Since good versus bad devs is almost impossible to interview for (for the people doing the interviewing: someone in management who has serious trouble telling Java code from Korean poetry), they are extremely unwilling to pay well and in a team with 90% bad programmers, and there's a strong culture pushing NOT standing out. The only way to do well as a programmer is to be a freelancer.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

jjoonathan 11y ago

It doesn't just happen during market downturns. The flip side of "market forces eventually make bread and apartments and cars cheap" is (and has always been) "market forces eventually make labor cheap". Quality of Life has one factor in the numerator and one in the denominator, so there are only three ways to guarantee that the quotient rises: ignore the less-rosy factor, convince yourself that past performance is proof of future returns (rather than, say, superimposition over a long-term trend of benefits from technological progress), or to fight+luck your way to the winning side of the supply/demand game and ignore those who don't. The time will come when software engineering starts to saturate. Just like electrical engineering, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering... our time will come.

sceptic05 11y ago

In some ways it's actually worse in that programmers seem completely oblivious to what's happening to them. They allow the media to call them "coders" and will actually argue with you when you point out how the term is being used to marginalize them. They actively support the boot camp movement and code.org initiatives. They give talks at conferences[1] and write blog posts saying there's no such thing as programmer talent and that programming is easy and anyone can do it (could you imagine a doctor or lawyer publicly asserting likewise about their professions?) My advice to devs: make as much money as you possibly can now. Take VCs and tech companies for all they're worth and don't leave a penny on the table, because these people are fixing to crush you under their boot. 1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9486391 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9486391

xienze 11y ago
> They give talks at conferences[1] and write blog posts saying there's no such thing as programmer talent and that programming is easy and anyone can do it (could you imagine a doctor or lawyer publicly asserting likewise about their professions?) I think it's more akin to someone saying "anyone can paint" or "anyone can make music". Sure, on a very superficial level that's true. Anyone can make crude sketches or learn how to play Chopsticks. But a true aptitude for programming is the same as a true aptitude for art or music: not everyone can do it at that level.
- jonesb6 11y ago
  Except software engineering is both a science and an art. The statement 'anyone can make art' is widely accepted, but what about 'anyone can do science'? While anyone can pretty much do science the "I'm bad at math" or 'I suck at computers" rhetoric demonstrates a deep institutional feeling that science is fundamentally limited to only the most intelligent individuals. Thus by limiting SE to only being an art it devalues the skillset, proving OP's point IMO.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
iofj 11y ago
It's not just programmers, it's the left in general. The left, in the US, is pro-immigration. The left is supposed to be champion of the poor, and one thing is damn sure : restricting employer's access to cheap labor (meaning restricting immigration + high import taxes + restrictions on global workforces) certainly help that a lot. Although I'm starting to see the same in Europe. The "old" leftist parties are vehemently anti-immigration, for exactly this reason : it helps their constituency. The "young" left is really almost libertarian, which I would normally classify under extreme right. But I think the problem America's two-party political system: sometimes it feels like it's extreme-right versus lunatic-right.

mkozlows 11y ago

It may well be accurate to say that employers are reluctant to raise wages for developers, and that in the absence of that reluctance, salaries would be much higher. But to claim that devs are basically the same as exploited migrant agricultural labor is absurd to the point of offensiveness.

iofj 11y ago
> that devs are basically the same as exploited migrant agricultural labor is absurd to the point of offensiveness. I think the claim is more along the lines of "give it 5-10-20 years and ..." It's not as ridiculous as you make it out to be though. I'd like to point out that if you go anywhere in Eastern Europe (and if you want to be truly scared: rural Eastern Europe) or (I'm told) India, and you will see just that today. Sure there's places to migrate to that will (currently) pay much better (it's scary, a decent Polish programmer can see his gross pay go up 300% and net pay almost 400% by moving to California). I would like to say that partly this is because it's a bit of a lemon market in Eastern Europe. Since good versus bad devs is almost impossible to interview for (for the people doing the interviewing: someone in management who has serious trouble telling Java code from Korean poetry), they are extremely unwilling to pay well and in a team with 90% bad programmers, and there's a strong culture pushing NOT standing out. The only way to do well as a programmer is to be a freelancer.